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Modernist Temporalities: the Orpheu Generation and the Impact of History

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Modernist Temporalities: the Orpheu Generation and the Impact of History Modernist temporalities: the Orpheu generation and the impact of history António Sousa Ribeiro* Keywords Fernando Pessoa, First World War, Modernism, Violence. Abstract Taking the year 1915 as a reference, the essay analyses some aspects of the relationship of modernist writing with the Great War. In Portugal, this relationship appears in many cases in the form of an absence whose scattered traces can only be apprehended through ways of reading which are well aware of the complexities of the articulation between violence and discourse. Palavras-chave Fernando Pessoa, Primeira Guerra Mundial, Modernismo, Violência. Resumo Tomando como referência o ano de 1915, analisam-se aspetos da relação entre a escrita modernista e a Primeira Guerra Mundial. Em Portugal, esta relação assume em muitos casos a forma de uma ausência, cujos traços dispersos apenas podem ser captados por modos de ler suficientemente atentos às complexidades da articulação entre a violência e o discurso. * School of Humanities and Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra. Ribeiro Modernist temporalities (There is so much to do, My God! and these people distracted by war!)1 José de Almada Negreiros, “A Cena do Ódio” Let me start with a short reflection on the year 1915: it would seem that the mention of the year by itself points simply to the simultaneity of a variety of events happening synchronically in different locations. This is not so, however. Upon a closer look, it becomes apparent that 1915 is but the sign uniting what are in fact quite different temporalities. The figure of exile, surfacing metaphorically – e.g. in the introduction to the first issue of Orpheu by Luis de Montalvor –, but also taken literally, as exemplified by the paths taken by Mário de Sá-Carneiro or, later, José de Almada Negreiros, points at the non-coincidence of the time-frame of the Portuguese literary and artistic avant-garde with the temporality defined by the narrow horizon of a parochial cultural milieu. As a vital part of the endeavour to create “a [corrente] mais cosmopolita de quantas teem surgido em Portugal” [the most cosmopolitan current there has ever been in Portugal], to quote from Pessoa’s letter to Miguel de Unamuno of 26 March 1915 (PESSOA, 1999: 159; see also PESSOA, 2009: 372), Orpheu was seeking – one could say anxiously, as witnessed by Pessoa's sustained efforts to establish Orpheu as part of a European cosmopolitan network – to connect with an imaginary European temporality that would be coincident with the emphatic notion of the contemporary put forward by the hard core of the initiators of the journal. In 1915, however, as Orpheu was making its blasting appearance in the Portuguese literary landscape, this European temporality was not defined by cultural and literary production, rather, it was taking shape on the meeting ground of the battlefields of what was already being named the Great War – the “German war”, as Pessoa would consistently and significantly call it.2 This is where, as Almada Negreiros writes in his “Ultimatum Futurista às Gerações Portuguesas do Século XX” [Futurist Ultimatum to the Portuguese Generations of the 20th Century] of 19173 “toda a força da nossa nova pátria” [all the power of our new fatherland] could be sought after, since, as Almada continues, “No front está concentrada toda a Europa, portanto a Civilização actual” [The front is where the whole of Europe, 1 “(Há tanta coisa que fazer, Meu Deus! | e esta gente distraída em guerras!)”. Unless otherwise stated, all translations are mine. 2 See e.g. Pessoa’s unfulfilled project of a book that was to carry the title A Guerra Alemã. Investigação Sociológica da Sua Origem e Sentido (The German War. A Sociological Investigation on Its Origin and Meaning). Several fragments connected to this project have been published for the first time by Joel Serrão and his collaborators in the volume Ultimatum e Páginas de Sociologia Política (PESSOA, 1980). 3 Almada’s manifesto, much in the vein of Marinetti’s definition of war in 1915 as “sola igiene del mondo”, opens with an overt praise of war which is, in its radicalism, is unique in the Portuguese context and stands in strong contrast with Pessoa’s ambivalent, convoluted perspective on the matter. Pessoa Plural: 11 (P./Spring 2017) 10 Ribeiro Modernist temporalities and therefore contemporary civilization, is concentrated] (NEGREIROS, 1917: 36). But the unifying moment of the new European contemporaneity, the mark of civilisation, had not much to do with the fictions of literary or intellectual discourse, rather, it was being defined by the whole array of the unheard of technology of destruction characterising modern war. Portugal would not be officially entering the war until March 1916 – soon enough, in a staggering travel not just in space but above all in time, the peasant from a remote village in Trás-os- Montes would no longer be handling the hoe or driving the ox-drawn plough, but would be operating the machine-gun instead. It is against the background of this perverse dialectics of modernisation that the literary production of the period has to be assessed. In other words, what is the relation between literary modernity and the violent temporality of war, in what ways does the European experience of war reflect upon the literary production of the modernist generation? This is a topic that has to this day not attracted the attention it deserves and, as a matter of fact, is still waiting for thorough Europe- wide comparative analysis.4 Concerning Portuguese modernism, despite a few relevant studies,5 reflection on the topic has been rather scarce. It is symptomatic in this regard that the Dicionário de Fernando Pessoa e do Modernismo Português, published in 2008, has no entry for the First World War or the Great War. True, in the case of Portuguese modernism the Great War does not play by far the same role as in the case of the countries that were directly involved from the start and had a central part to perform. There is no national patriotic mobilization at a large scale in the form of what I have called elsewhere the literary front (RIBEIRO, 2014). However, in the course of time, with the increasing perception of the inevitability of Portugal’s entry into war and the growing anti-German resentment, one can find a large number of literary interventions taking a stance towards the War. In the journal A Águia e.g. one can find regularly, starting in November 1914, a growing body of political-literary essays and poems testifying as a rule to a fervent alignment with the cause of the Allies. Teixeira de Pascoaes figures prominently in this regard, starting with the essay “Portugal e a Guerra e a Orientação das Novas Gerações” [Portugal and the War and the Orientation of the New Generations], published in December 1914. The issue of June 1915 features a poem by Pascoaes simply entitled “A Bélgica” [Belgium]. This poem, actually an ode of praise for Belgium as “Pátria do infinito sofrimento” [Fatherland of infinite suffering], but singing as well the “soldados de França e de Inglaterra! | Multidões de heroísmos” [soldiers of France and England | Heroic crowds], is a most interesting piece concerning the literary imagination of war and is indeed quite representative of the 4 SCHNEIDER & SCHUMANN (2000), SHERRY (2003), BUELENS (2014), among a few others, are relevant references in this regard. 5 See LIND (1981), MONTEIRO (2000), RIBEIRO (2005), LEAL (2011), BARRETO (2014), DIX (2015). On the representation of Germany in Pessoa’s work, see also PIZARRO, 2006... Pessoa Plural: 11 (P./Spring 2017) 11 Ribeiro Modernist temporalities mythical heroic vision dominating the literary and intellectual discourse on the Great War. Such direct pronouncements are not to be found in Pessoa or, better, as we now may know, they would only find their way into print form long after the death of the poet. Indeed, Pessoa's fragments on the “German War” testify to a close attention to European politics and to the development of what he would later refer to as “a desolação mortífera da guerra europeia” [the deadly devastation of the European war] (PESSOA, 1980: 335; BNP/E3, 92C-100r).6 I will not dwell here upon these fragments which I have dealt with briefly elsewhere (RIBEIRO, 2005). Instead, keeping the year of 1915 as the frame of reference, I will explore, under a comparative perspective, some more oblique references. What I would like to show, although I can do so only fragmentarily in this context, is that in Portugal the relation of modernist writing with the Great War takes in many cases the form of an absence whose scattered traces can only be apprehended through ways of reading which are well aware of the complexities of the relationship between violence and discourse. Let me provide two relevant examples, circumstantial as they may be. The figure of the ultimatum, prominently represented in 1917 by the manifestos of José de Almada Negreiros and Álvaro de Campos published in Portugal Futurista,7 is usually, and quite rightly, interpreted as echoing the British ultimatum of 1890, an event that triggered extensive shock waves in Portugal, leaving a lasting imprint on Portuguese public opinion. I would not refrain from speculating, however, that that figure has also a lot to do with the immediate context of the War and is inseparable from it. Let us not forget that the pretext for plunging Europe into the carnage was the infamous Austro-Hungarian ultimatum against Serbia. It is, it seems to me, not at all far-fetched to bring also the potential of this allusion into play regarding Campos’ and Almada’s interventions.
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